Content marketing, millennials and creating experiences

The financial services industry is experiencing disruption from newcomers: it’s time to act now or get left behind when it comes to digital marketing. At FinanceConnect Sydney 2015 we heard from some of the major players in the financial services industry about how they are approaching digital marketing.

Getting buy-in from the C-suite leads to success

Paul Edwards, general manager of corporate communications at ANZ, was the keynote speaker.

He told the story of how ANZ’s CEO Mike Smith had a digital marketing ‘aha’ moment – that is when BlueNotes was born.

Edwards gave an insight into the development of the online publishing site, as well as the internal transformation that ANZ had to go through as a company to get to the stage of wholly embracing a digital and social strategy. Without the support and enthusiasm of its CEO, ANZ would not have made such a significant change to its internal and external communications policies and strategies.

While it can be challenging to get buy-in from the C-suite, when the executives are true content marketing evangelists beautiful things can happen.

Millennials are shaking things up

Simon Wake, managing director of Ipsos, presented the research into millennials and finance at the event. He pointed out how the 5.7 million millennials in Australia are influencing the way we all consume content and engage online.

Millennials are seeking educational content: 70 per cent of affluent millennials said that educational content is really important to them.

Be where the audience is: The importance of the mobile experience and seamless cross-device connectivity continues to grow. Use relevant social platforms to your advantage.

How to stand out in a cluttered space

There are so many competitors out there trying to get the attention of your audience. At FinanceConnect Stuart Tucker, general manager of brand, sponsorship and marketing opporations at Commonwealth Bank, spoke about their drive towards mobile technologies and how they continue to better the user experience for their customers. Commonwealth Bank’s Cardless Cash is one of many initiatives that solves problems for their customers using technology.

The event also featured other financial services brands including Ratesetter, a newcomer to the industry who has full transparency with their customers. This transparency is what customers seek out and how Ratesetter has managed to gain a strong customer base. The brands that were presenting at FinanceConnect are all in competition for the same audience so it was interesting to hear about their different tactics for staying top of mind. All of the brands seemed aware that digital marketing has changed so much in recent years – there is a revolution happening right now that all brands need to get on board with.

Create an experience for your customer

The discussion across the whole event kept revolving around the concept of trust. How can brands build trust with their audience?

Jennifer Grazel, director of global vertical marketing for LinkedIn, put it simply: “Be authentic, be relevant and engage in a dialogue.”

An authentic voice is inviting, and your audience craves a human connection. Creating useful content that keeps your readers coming back for more will help build the community for your brand, and feeding that community with a two-way conversation is vital. Using social platforms that align with those audiences, targeting content using amplification tools and exploring relevant topics will help you move from content producer to content marketer.